This may be the right forum... ?
http://news.ufl.edu/2008/06/11/flying-saucer/
This was big a while ago, and I reference it not because I like the design, (I don't. A spinning airframe, the control issues, remote communication from inside a plasma cloud... It's messy.) ...but because his method of creating/controlling plasma would be easily adaptable to more basic layouts.
Tubes. Give me thrust in one direction. It's all I need. It would seem far easier to have the large surface area by placing either a single spiral, or concentric ring electrodes in a tube.
Also, at much lower energy, it would also seem to offer a wonderful way of reducing friction on the wetted surface of the aircraft.
Plasma engines
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This fact has been noted before, but when you get right down to it, the energy almost totally comes from the proton fusing into the B11. From there on out it is just the hyper-excited C12 shedding particles to handle the energy generated. Thus, fusion. (Note: hyper-excited is MY term, not used in the physics community as far as I know!)
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